


Daud’s Home for Children and Whalers

by SympatriCuckoo



Category: Dishonored (Video Game)
Genre: Child OCs, Crack, Gen, Low Chaos Daud, Orphans, Post-Low Chaos Ending, gen - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-20
Updated: 2016-06-02
Packaged: 2018-06-03 08:22:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,023
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6603682
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SympatriCuckoo/pseuds/SympatriCuckoo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Because Daud seems like the type of guy who'll ruthlessly blow out someone's kneecaps and bludgeon them to death, but be sweet to animals and small children.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I don’t know. I really don’t.
> 
> Warning: unrepentant fluff.

Emily had pardoned Daud.

 

The news hadn't been made public-all of the officials involved in the legal channels through which the pardon had to pass were unfailingly loyal to Emily, a requirement this early in her reign, and not a word had leaked.

 

Daud had looked shocked when Corvo had delivered it, although it was hard to tell whether that was due to being granted a pardon, or whether it had to do with the Lord Protector tracking him down again for non-lethal purposes. Probably, it was because of both.

 

When Daud had said he was retiring, Corvo had taken that to mean that he would be returning to Serkonos, doing whatever it was retired assassins did. If Corvo had thought about it more, he probably would've come up with the vague impression that Daud's retirement would involve cigars and alcohol. Possibly even a beach and bright floral shirts.

 

It wouldn't have involved staying in Dunwall, and it certainly wouldn't have involved children. And most of all, he wouldn't have foreseen the supernatural Whaler assassins staying on to help Daud with a profession that should be just about as far from killing as one could possibly get.

 

The newly opened Kaldwin Home occupied the former Whaler base in Central Rudshore. Children, solemn and quiet orphans of the plague, were running about under the watchful maskless eyes of the Whalers. Others were playing more quietly, reading or drawing. And still more were inside, attending classes in basic maths and reading.

 

Corvo had been keeping tabs. It was surprising that a gang of killers could be such caring and efficient childcare providers, but the facts spoke for themselves.

 

Originally malnourished and wary, the children were now healthy and vibrant with life. The traumas from their experiences with death and anarchy were still fresh, but healing. The Whalers themselves were no stranger to trauma and it was weirdly heartwarming to see hardened killers empathizing with and comforting kids.

 

Daud's office had been refurbished with a ceiling, and as Corvo walked through the doors, Daud himself looked up, a child clinging to his back.

 

“Corvo,” Daud greeted evenly. His stoicism was ruined when he winced, the little girl tugging on his short hair.

 

“More piggyback!” she demanded.

 

“Daud,” Corvo returned. He didn't even fight the smile that spread over his face, and he laughed as Daud glared.

 

“Did you _actually_ need something? Or are you just here to make my life miserable.”

 

“A little bit of both to be honest.”

 

Daud grumbled then knelt down. Reluctantly the girl stepped down and before she left she admonished Corvo. “You better be nice to mister Daud!” she pouted.

 

Corvo stared in shock. When he turned around, Daud had a shit-eating grin on his face, the bastard.

 

“Consider us even,” he said, and well, that was fair enough. 

 

With one last glare, Corvo nodded before heading over to the desk. Bureaucracy waited for no one, not even Marked agents of the Outsider.

 


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the unexpected drabble-prequel of a drabble

When Daud finds the first child, sunken eyed and hollowed cheeked, fearless in his desperation to survive, he scoops him up without a moment's hesitation. It's not quite due to pity, not quite due to compassion; more like the imposition of some long-forgotten instinct recently uncovered in the wake of the Brigmore “job”.

  
  


Some Whalers question it, like they've questioned everything after the Abbey's Surge, after Billy's defection. Words don't work – how can they when he can't even explain it to himself? – and he beats the rank and file black and blue in the coming weeks.

  
  


The boy's name is Christopher and he's nine years old. He watched both his parents die of the plague; they had given him all the elixir they could scavenge, barter and buy.

  
  


~*~

  
  


What used to be the Golden Cat is now deserted. Who knew Corvo's abduction of the Pendleton twins would be so bad for business?

  
  


Peeling gold leaf and chipping paint reveal walls just as grimy and rotten as those in the surrounding areas, and it's on the brothel's roof that Daud finds her.

  
  


She's a half-feral slip of a teen, skinny and bony, the awkward gangliness of youth exacerbated by malnutrition and the sheer negligee she's wearing. Yet the fire in her eyes reminds Daud of Billy.

  
  


Most of the Whalers don't say anything, at least not in his presence. A few show up at meals with new bruises and sprains, but Daud neither knows what happened nor who caused them, and the injured Whalers remain tight-lipped.

  
  


She's fifteen years old and was the oldest of eleven siblings. Her father had died of the plague and she sold herself to the Cat. The money was sent to her mother. Elixirs were smuggled out for her siblings. Her family isn't in the city and their names aren’t on the lists of the dead.

  
  


When she tells Daud her name is Sybil, he leaves the compound entirely.

  
  


~*~

  
  


Dunwall is starting to live again. Sokolov technology has been dismantled. The streets are tentatively bustling. Some stores are open. It seems like civilization is back on track, as though the world has been righted, as though things are looking up.

  
  


Really Daud should know better.

  
  


He's standing on a skiff adrift in the Wrenhaven, and it's empty but for himself and a baby in a basket. It's like something straight out of an Abbey sermon or an Oracular morality play, and Daud wonders when his life became so bizarre.

  
  


Probably around the same time he was Marked.

  
  


The trip to Draper's Ward is a small nightmare of baby-vomit and soiled nappies. By the time he arrives, stealth is well and truly fucked: the baby wails, hates the transversals; and Daud stinks to high heaven.

  
  


His glare is rendered ineffective by the baby in his arms; Jerome can't stop laughing at him.

  
  


The baby coos and blows a spit bubble.

  
  


~*~

  
  


“My old friend. You've been interesting again of late.

  
  


“Here you are, a man who's dedicated to killing – who has spilled oceans of blood – taking in children?

  
  


“Just who are you hoping to save? Them? Yourself? Or perhaps you hope to drown them with you?”

  
  


 


End file.
